What it’s like to play against Notre Dame freshman phenom Hannah Hidalgo

Notre Dame held a full five-on-five scrimmage not long before November’s season-opener against South Carolina. Referees officiating the action inside Purcell Pavilion, a full complement of male practice players providing competition for head coach Niele Ivey’s team and an accurate indicator of where things stood entering the new slate.

The works.

Hannah Hidalgo, an 18-year-old yet to log a second of time on the floor in a college basketball game, dropped a 30-piece. Then she scored 31 on the No. 1 Gamecocks in Paris, France, in front of a national TV audience on FOX. Notre Dame practice player C.J. Naudet was watching.

“That made me feel better,” he told Blue & Gold of Hidalgo’s performance.

Five months later Naudet knows he should have never felt bad Hidalgo ripping through him and his classmates, some of whom played Division III ball, anyway. This is who she is. This is what she does. Twelve-time ACC Rookie of the Week, an all-time record. ACC Rookie of the Year. ACC Defensive Player of the Year. ACC Tournament Most Valuable Player. One of five freshmen to ever be named a First Team Associated Press All-American. Notre Dame record-breaking extraordinaire.

Hidalgo is one of the best players in the country. Naudet’s been present in practices for the behind-the-scenes work that’s gotten her there. Of course, so much of it is innate talent and natural instincts coupled with all the work she put in before arriving at Notre Dame. Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-MacCuin was made aware of that in the second round of the NCAA Tournament when Hidalgo went for 19 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 steals.

“She’s as advertised,” McPhee-McCuin said. “I think one of the things that I appreciate with her is just her competitive spirit, and that’s not something that you can teach. That’s something that was born inside of her. She was completely relentless the whole time. Yeah, she can pass and she can score, but you can’t teach what’s inside of you. I think that’s her greatest strength.”

Hidalgo doesn’t throw herself into game situations and all the sudden become a spotlight darling who feasts on foes from the other sideline, though. She’s as good in 90-minute practices being recorded on a camcorder in the bird’s nest at Purcell Pavilion as she is in 40-minute nationally-televised games. And just as intense, too, which is saying something if you’ve ever seen her spout some smack after an and-1 or pump her fists when one of her teammates makes a critical shot.

McPhee-McCuin saw it once. Naudet and Hidalgo’s cohorts see it every day.

“Every year it’s like, ‘Oh, you have this however-many-star-recruit coming in,’ and we always talk amongst the guys like, ‘I wonder how good they actually are,'” Naudet said. “Hannah, right from the start, was automatically very good and more refined than most freshmen you see.”

“Her intensity doesn’t just start when that 40 minutes starts,” Notre Dame senior center Nat Marshall added. “It’s how she prepares. It’s how she attacks practice. It’s how she attacks pregame. All those things add up, and she is the same all the time. Not just in games.”

Guarding Hidalgo

Naudet described Hidalgo as a “straightforward scorer.” That explains a points per game average of 22.9, good for No. 5 in the NCAA entering the Sweet 16, but that’s also the PG way to put it. Like something from a sports-themed Disney movie.

In real life, staying in front of the 5’6″ cannonball is more like something from a John Carpenter horror film. Impossible to come away unscathed if you’re just a supporting character.

“She’ll make you pay if you’re a step behind or if you make the wrong move,” Naudet said. “She’s going to hit the shot or get by you, and she’s really consistent with it. She’ll always make you pay.”

“I’ve seen moments where even some of our fastest male practice players, she’s broken them down and they’ve fallen,” Ivey said. “That’s something you don’t see very often.”

Former walk-on Sarah Cernugel occasionally teams up with the practice guys for scout work. She’s been on the wrong end of Hidalgo getting buckets.

“She’ll shoot it right over your hand, and she’ll let you know about it too,” Cernugel said.

On the first of February, Hidalgo hit a Georgia Tech defender with a quadruple crossover on a play that also included subtly intentional hesitation in her ball-handling and a step-back jumper. She canned the lengthy midrange shot, nothing but net. It was as close to Steph Curry embarrassing his defender with a series of dribbles and a nail-in-the-coffin closer of a flick of the wrist as it gets at the college level.

Hidalgo skipped backward for a couple paces with her eyes staring straight through the victim before turning to run to the defensive end of the floor. We’ve all seen Curry outwardly express his emotions in similar fashion. The combination of elite skill and just enough flamboyance to deem himself widely lovable has served him well. It’ll work in Hidalgo’s favor too.

It already has for the 19-year-old, who scored a career-high 35 points in that game against the Yellow Jackets.

“Just having somebody with that type of presence, that type of swag, at this point it’s confidence that gets you to the next round and she carries that confidence with her and it’s contagious,” Ivey said.

Hannah Hidalgo really hit the Steph Curry crossover step-back swish the other night. 😵

This is just so darn good from the Notre Dame freshman. pic.twitter.com/dkHpDrtVSm

— Tyler Horka (@tbhorka) February 3, 2024

Getting guarded by Hidalgo

Before any of Notre Dame’s practice guys ever knew Hidalgo was a walking — skipping, sprinting — bucket, she showed them she’s probably even better, relatively, on defense than she is on offense. She’s one of four Naismith Defensive Player of the Year finalists.

“Early in the season and even during the summer, the guys didn’t know who I was as a defender,” Hidalgo said. “So they’d put the ball out and I’d just take it. Now they’re a little more cautious dribbling the ball in front of me.”

Well, sometimes. When they remember they’re not playing pickup at the rec.

“She’ll get you in one of the first drills in practice and you’re like, ‘Ah, I forgot again,'” Naudet said. “You have to make sure to tighten up. You always have to be on your guard.”

It’s impossible for actual opponents to prepare for that. Women’s college basketball players and even the male practice players they go up against across the country can’t give guards an accurate feel for what what they’re up against in Hidalgo. She’s got 157 steals this season, 40 clear of the next Power Five player.

She’s unlike anyone else when it comes to taking the ball away. Naudet called her a “ballhawk,” a term typically reserved for football players like Notre Dame’s own Xavier Watts, who tied for the FBS lead in interceptions in 2023.

It’s incredibly impressive for a hooper to get tagged with that descriptor.

“She always has the mentality of, ‘I’m going to go get one,'” Naudet said. “It’s a combination of being aggressive, always wanting one and then having the facilities to get it.”

“Bringing the ball up the court, you can’t really be thinking about what play you’re going to run,” Cernugel added. “You have to be aware of where she is. You have to be careful bringing it up because she can take it from you at any time. Even when you think you’re past her, she’ll probably take it from you. There is just another mindset you have to have, protecting the ball.”

Consider Hidalgo a safety the opposing quarterback wants to stay away from but ultimately just cannot. The safety always knows where to be and how to get to the ball. He gets in the QB’s head. INTs ensue.

That’s Hidalgo. She’s in everyone’s head. Takeaways aplenty come next.

“She’s the best defensive player I’ve ever seen,” Cernugel said.

Perhaps, when she’s no longer a teenager and she’s had four years worth of scoring and stealing in a Notre Dame uniform, people will said she’s the best player they’ve ever seen.

Period.